


Fathers and Sons

by citrinesunset



Category: Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:06:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrinesunset/pseuds/citrinesunset
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heathcliff reflects on his relationship with Hareton, over the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fathers and Sons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Selena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selena/gifts).



> Note: References to child abuse and bad/neglectful parenting, but nothing beyond what's in the book.
> 
> To the recipient: I hope you like the fic. I was very happy with my assignment, because _Wuthering Heights_ is one of my favorite novels, and I liked your prompt. But I hope I was able to write something like what you were hoping for.

"You should feel ashamed," Ellen Dean told him once, "how you're raising that child. . ."

 

"How _I_ raise him?" Heathcliff smiled bitterly. "Do you forget who his father is?"

 

"But your influence. . ."

 

"I've had little time to influence him. Indeed, I should say you've played a greater role in his upbringing than I."

 

That was true, in a way. She, not Heathcliff, had cared for Hareton in the earliest days of his life. But she didn't say anything more about Hareton, then, and Heathcliff was glad of it. The child wasn't her concern anymore, and she was no longer at Wuthering Heights.

 

She'd said it was a shame that Hareton wasn't learning his letters, or how to sign his name. But the boy had no interest in any of that. And if he'd learned bad habits, well, the seed had been planted long before Heathcliff returned. He was certain of that.

 

But Heathcliff also knew he might have. . .understated his influence on the boy now. It did amuse him to hear Hareton curse his father. Hareton's feelings towards Hindley didn't need any aid from Heathcliff, but Heathcliff felt no shame in teaching him the words to express them, and no shame in laughing and patting Hareton on the head to encourage him.

 

He'd seen the look in the boy's eyes when Hindley drank. Now, when Hindley became intoxicated, Hareton would hide behind the folds of Heathcliff's coat. He would go to sit by Heathcliff's feet. Hindley would see it, and fix Heathcliff with a fretful but impotent stare.

 

It filled Heathcliff with pride. _Yes_ , he thought, _the boy finds comfort in me. You've driven him to me._

 

Indeed, in the short time he'd been back, Hareton had become more his than anyone's.

 

It was several months later when Hindley died. Hareton did not cry at the funeral, and didn't speak of his father then or afterward. If he cried on his own, when he was in bed or when he was left to his own devices, Heathcliff never knew.

 

 

* * *

 

 

One evening, while they ate dinner by the hearth, Heathcliff asked Hareton, "Don't you miss your father, then? You don't seem to have anything to say about him anymore."

 

Hareton looked up from his food. He blinked, wrinkled his nose, and stared like he didn't know what to say. Heathcliff wondered, sometimes, if he was quite stupid.

Finally, Hareton said, "Well, he doesn't yell at me anymore. . . ."

 

"So you're glad he's gone, then? That's very wicked of you."

 

Hareton looked down, and poked at his meat with his knife. He was still very young. Perhaps he didn't understand.

 

He didn't mention Hindley again.

 

* * *

 

 

There was a moment when Heathcliff didn't believe Linton was his son. He reminded him of Isabella, but not of himself at all.

 

Linton wasn't happy at Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff didn't know how to make him happy, so he quickly decided he wouldn't try. And anyway, he wouldn't have known how to try, if he'd wanted to. He found Linton to be a sickly and bothersome child. Linton wasn't comfortable. Their food didn't please him. He said he missed the city, and his mother.

 

He seemed lonely, too. For a few days, he asked when he could see his cousin, Cathy, again. Heathcliff didn't answer him. He'd decided, as soon as he learned of Isabella's death, that his son would have nothing to do with Thrushcross Grange if he could help it. Eventually, Linton learned he wouldn't receive an answer, and stopped asking.

 

Linton quickly lost any interest in Hareton. He tried to show Hareton a book, once, but Hareton scowled and pushed it back.

 

"What would I want with it?" Hareton asked.

 

Linton looked at him like he was mad. "So what do you do, then? For fun?"

 

Heathcliff listened from across the room while Hareton spoke briefly of exploring the moors, and of learning to fix things and work in the barn.

 

"Are a servant, then?" Linton asked.

 

Neither boy spoke to the other much after that, and Heathcliff found that made him glad.

 

Hareton didn't seem any the worse without Linton's friendship. He stayed mostly to himself these days. Heathcliff didn't care how Hareton spent his time as long as work got done and he wasn't any bother.

 

It was good to have Hareton, though. He was growing up, and would be a young man, soon. They would need the extra hands, especially now that Joseph was growing in years.

 

Hareton didn't complain about the work he did. Though Heathcliff thought it possible that Hareton simply didn't realize there might have been an alternative, that he might have inherited money and a good name if things had gone differently.

 

Heathcliff had wondered once if he would dislike having Hareton in his care. It was too easy, at times, to look in his eyes and see traces of Hindley or, worse yet, of Catherine.

 

But it proved difficult to despise Hareton. He was too quiet, too solitary, too accepting. Raising Hareton had suited Heathcliff -- he was there when Heathcliff wanted him, absent when he wasn't wanted, and was as suited to the un-privileged life he lived as if he'd been born for it.

 

Though, for all that, Heathcliff would have preferred it if Hareton showed some sign of bitterness or hatred towards him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Heathcliff listened, sometimes, while Joseph spoke adoringly to Hareton about the Earnshaws.

 

Heathcliff grit his teeth, but resisted the temptation to say anything. He allowed Joseph's clutch on the past, and watched Hareton sit silently and whittle some wood while he listened.

 

If Heathcliff were to say anything, it'd be that Hareton's misfortune was being born an Earnshaw.

 

Heathcliff's misfortune was in _not_ being an Earnshaw. He and Hareton balanced each other quite nicely, in that regard.

 

Heathcliff knew the importance of names, or the importance of what they stood for. Perhaps, once, the Earnshaw name _had_ meant something. Now, however, it meant nothing. And Heathcliff, who had no name, had learned to take what he wanted. That was what loss and lack had taught him. He wondered what it would teach Hareton.

 

If Hareton ever felt his life was unfair, he had only his father to blame.

 

Hadn't Hindley believed in the value of bloodlines? Hadn't he thought himself superior because he was his father's son, and Heathcliff was an orphan? Wasn't it…appropriate, then, that Hareton should bear his father's disgrace?

 

Heathcliff told himself that it was.

 

* * *

 

 

Heathcliff had heard once – he couldn't remember when or where – that the sick were closer to the dead than other people. When one was near death, the veil between the living and the dead thinned, so that there were glimpses of what lay beyond.

 

Heathcliff believed he must be very close to death, then. Every day, now, he felt a strange presence around him, a strange chill and fear that threatened to overtake him. Sometimes, when he looked out the window, he saw a flicker of something. A figure out on the moors, hair and a long skirt blowing in the wind. . . . And then it would be gone, and, despite his terror, Heathcliff wished that it wasn't.

 

Heathcliff didn't feel like going down to the kitchen to eat, today. He didn't intend to eat at all, but then Hareton was there, wordlessly, with a bowl of soup for him.

 

"I suppose," Heathcliff said, "that when I'm gone, Mrs. Heathcliff will run this house as she wishes, and you will be a very good help to her. Will you not?"

 

He had seen them talking, from time to time. They weren't friendly, but. . .he thought there was warmth there, between Cathy and Hareton, that had been lacking before.

 

Hareton grunted and shrugged. "You aren't dying," he said.

 

But he knew somehow that he was. He wondered, now, if it wouldn't be nicer for Wuthering Heights to be Hareton's. Heathcliff had never felt like a father, but Hareton had been more of a son to him than Linton, and better company than his daughter-in-law. He thought he might be the closest thing Hareton had had to a father, though they'd never discussed anything like that.

 

Heathcliff pushed the soup aside. "Go," he said. " I need to rest."

 

Hareton turned to leave. He pulled the door closed behind him, and in the last moment Heathcliff saw his face, he imagined for a moment that he saw himself.


End file.
